Doug on Cloud

GFI Moves Anti-Virus, Server Management to Cloud

Last week I had lunch with Walter Scott, CEO of GFI Software. Walter is a colorful character. He leaves his Ferrari at his house in Florida, his 8-foot Bourget chopper at his home in Massachusetts, and I'm not sure what he drives when he's at the company headquarters in Malta. And his most recent last cool vehicle, a whopping Ford F-650 pickup, is somewhere in the Middle East presumably being driven by an oil sheik.

The last big GFI news was the acquisition of Sunbelt Software out of Clearwater, Florida, which may explain the Ferrari 340 parked in the Sunshine State. Sunbelt was kicking some Symantec butt with Vipre, an anti-virus/anti-malware tool. Former Sunbelt CEO Alex Eckelberry always called Vipre the Porsche of anti-virus. It doesn't have every feature; instead it is lean, mean, and high performance. I thought this was CEO hype until I asked his customers. They agreed, feeling Symantec was bloated and Vipre wasn't.

GFI had a product line of its own, long before Sunbelt, which included GFI LanGuard, which offers network security, and Network Server Monitor.